The Red Stallion
by Rose G
Summary: Island Stallion based. The story of the Spanish stallion who first had a herd on Azul Island, and the boy who rode him with the Conquistadors.


The Red Stallion

Rose G

Disclaimer – Steve and Flame are the property of Walter Farley and I have made no money from using them.

A/N – I apologise for any screw ups with the history; I would have researched but I'm in the middle of revising for a history exam – one lot is enough!

_How did you come to be here? _Steve asked the giant red horse silently. He twined the flowing mane through his fingers, touched a reverent hand to the sleek summer coat of his horse, this wild stallion of the Windward Islands of the Caribbean Sea. 'I know that you're from the Conquistador's horses, Flame. And they must have been splendid, to have bred here, to have got horses like you. Horses that would have been great in any time, any world. Why did they leave them here?'

Flame brushed his muzzle against Steve's shirt, velvet lips nibbling at the cloth. 'They must have been something, Flame. Your grandsire's grandsire, and beyond. Imagine having a cavalry of horses all like you. Why did they come here? Was one of them like you?'

They stood in peaceful thought, red horse and young man as dusk fell over Azul Island, and the stars that had watched over the Conquistador's stallions watched over this pair, too. And this is their story, the way it was in the beginning, the story that ended or did it begin again? When Steve sat astride his red stallion in Havana, Cuba and raced against the kings of the turf. A story that began before Flame was foaled, before Jay saw the grey colt knocked down at Tattersalls , before the grandsire of that colt had drawn breath.

A chestnut mare lay labouring in the fields of Spain, a breeze cooling her sweaty flanks. Her master stood by her head, talking to his son. 'This mare will have the colt of colts tonight, Javier. See how good her conformation is – tall, strong, hardy without being pony like. She is the pick of all the mares I've ever had. And see, how she lets us stand here.'

Javier smiled, having heard this before, but always enjoying praise of the mare he was sometimes allowed to groom and water. 'No, Father, I think you're wrong there. It is the sire that will make this one great. So fleet and fast, that his jockey claimed he could outrace the wind. I know you weren't there when me and Manuel took her to breed, but he is more horse than I've ever seen.'

'And you, at thirteen, have seen enough of horses to judge?'

The boy grinned. 'Yes.'

The attention of the pair was pulled back to the mare as she dropped to the ground, heaving to expel the foal's head and neck, encased in the sac. A pale foal, too indistinct to see the true colour.

'Chestnut, like his sire and dam,' the boy predicted.

'Bay, like her first foal.'

'Chestnut.' Silence reigned for minutes, until the foal was laying on its side, damp muzzle broken through the sac. Soon after, they could both see it's colour. Chestnut as red as blood, as fire, with a white lightening bolt zigzagging from between dark eyes down to a soft muzzle. The mare whirled to her feet, ripping the rest of the sac of with her teeth so they could see it was a colt, long legged and short backed.

'Red.' Javier named the colt instantly. 'Red. A good colour and a good name for a warhorse.'

'A horse like that could race.'

'And what glory is there in that? He will be such a charger that no-one will stand before us.' The boy's voice was passionate.

They looked at each other, then back at the red colt who was sitting with his forelegs upright and hinds folded under his haunches. The white streak gave his Arabian head a comical appearance, but the older man could see him as a great stallion tacked for war, Javier astride him with a pennant snapping overhead and a sword at his hip. Neither of them would be comical then, but fearful, charging at the army's head.

'Red!' Javier called out to his horse.

Breaking the colt was a battle. A yearling, he was fleet enough and strong enough to outrun the two-year olds when they raced for joy in the paddocks. His glorious tail carried as a banner over his quarters, the tiny head thrust in the air he was perfection that turned into a demon when they sought to bridle and bit him. Yet Javier could almost manage him, working with soft words and patience in the scorching sun. Every advance – the first bit the colt didn't fight, the saddle and dummy, the enchanted day when Javier first sat astride the two-year old – was reported to his father. The strike marks, for Red was savage with his forefeet, and the bruises from falls, were not.

The cavalry men came to regard the young man and his colt as talismans, for Javier had tamed with time what they had been unable to break with skill or force. They taught them the military drill, which they learned unwilling, chaffing at the formal steps of extension and collection, the leg changes that seemed so regimented, and even the weapon drills, until they first rode against another man and horse in practice.

Javier found that his horse's aggression had only been masked by the training since his first mouthing. The three year old, now standing 16 hands, pulled Javier close without instruction and screamed – a stallion's scream, as he crashed into the grey's shoulder. Javier managed to draw his blunted training sword but Red reared and swept his shod hoof down the horse's neck. Javier dropped the sword to learn forward and slap Red on the muzzle. The other rider swung the flat of his sword against Red's chest, and then yanked his horse back.

Red's forelegs dropped back down to earth as their sergeant pushed his bay towards them and grasped their reins. 'Control your horse! Can't you ride yet?'

Javier dropped his eyes, felt the trembling anger of his horse. He eased the reins, touched the lathered neck. 'Sorry, Sir.' A victory sequel escaped Red as he saw the grey being led away with blood dripping down his neck.

They redoubled their training then, constant work on control until the stallion danced even if Javier dropped his reins. Their fights were mainly restricted to against unmounted men or older, more sensible horses for the sight of another horse bearing down on him was too much for the stallion. As Javier's father had thought, there was nothing comical about the armoured man on his prancing war horse. And despite the lack of real training fights, no-one approached the young man's prowess with weapons nor could the native Spanish horses match pace or stamina with Red. After 50 miles, he champed his bit and moved restlessly so that Javier was the only one who could unsaddle his horse. There were two other half-Arabs in their group, yet neither of them had Red's spark of fire in their hearts.

Red was five and Javier 18 when they led the warhorses onto the wooden ships and sailed for the New World. The holds groaned with tack and armour, and the soft calls of horses echoed over the boom and crack of the sails and the creak of the decks. Javier slept by his stallion's stall, rubbing the blood red coat to a ruby gleam, clinging to the horse's crested neck when the waves threatened to toss him off his feet. The garland of flowers given to him by a young girl, he fed to the horse before they turned brown.

It was at Azul Island they first landed, camping on the beach spit and leaving the horses on the galleons that rode the waves. 'What's the rest of this island like?' Javier felt compelled to ask the other men.

'Those rocks there – and a valley,' answered one of the older men. This was his second voyage.

'A valley?'

'Through the rocks there. We've cut a tunnel system through. Thought it might be useful as a retreat.'

They showed him the valley and the oh-so-narrow tunnel that led through the rack wall to the green grass and the river, shaded on all sides by the towering blue walls. Suddenly, Javier understood how it got it's name, and he could understand, as well, that his future was mapped out here. He whispered one word: 'Mine.' Then he recalled his Red Horse in the holds of the ship, and changed it to 'Ours.'

The plans grew in his head throughout that campaign, over lands where no civilised human had ever ridden, against barbarous people who trembled with fear before the fully matured, 16.2 stallion. Javier set him to dancing the school steps, then pulled him to balance on his hindlegs, rearing in homage like the image of a Sun- God. Azul Island – a stud- where the greatest horses in the world could be bred, without the need for them to endure the long voyage from Spain to the New World. A place where Red could sire a line of horses so great that the King of Spain would not be ashamed to ride one!

This dream sustained them through their first taste of battle, when Red killed a man with his hooves. They did not return as great heroes, but no-one had stood before Javier and his Red warhorse and lived.

They returned twice to Azul in the next three years, using his own money to facilitate the slow carving of the tunnels until they were wide enough to allow passage for a horse. And it was Red, now in his prime and survivor of several campaigns who walked first down the rock tunnel, who reared in delight in the valley as his master freed him, and run to taste the green grass.

Javier stood and watched the giant charger, slept beside his horse that night and in the ones that followed.

The mares came later, 12 in a bunch, then odd ones, until the herd was complete; composed of Spanish horses, gaited ones, a few ponies and the elegant Arabians from distant lands. Foals were born – three crops, from Red, from the small roan whose herd grazed at the other end of the valley, and from the pony stallion who run with four mares on the beach and dunes.

Red got five crops, Javier watching the births, taming the colts and sending them off to war. It was his stud now, a place of dreams in the hazy sun, where swift horses run under the blue rock walls.

And yet – empires fall. Javier went to a last ditch war, astride a bay colt of Red's. They never returned.

Many years passed; men no longer came to Azul except to hide.

Red's foals were born in peace, begot others and died.

Men no longer came to Azul at all.

Red's line bred on, culminating in the birth of a giant red stallion, the image of Red but lacking the lightening bolt stripe. The same stallion who stood beside Steve now, looking out to sea.

'Did you hear that, Flame?' He'd thought he'd heard the ring of a shod hoof, the peal of a trumpet, the boom of a ship under sail.

'Flame?' The horse bugled a greeting; not a challenge to something that seemed to move in the last minute of light before it was truly dark.

Steve slipped his arm around Flame's neck, and in the starlight, it could have been Javier and Red or Steve and Flame who stood on Azul Island dreaming of glory in war and race. All was as it had been; only time had changed.


End file.
